rowed ; it is artificial ; and therefore ^ycak. In the conntry 

 there is less schooling — thank God for that — and more study ; 

 less reading and more reflection — more digestion of what is 

 heard, seen or read, and more appropriation to the life. The 

 sermon of Sunday is food for thought in the field, and in the 

 woods, and in the barn. The newspaper is read to be discuss- 

 ed, and not thrown down to take up another, and another, till 

 the mind, like the drunkard's appetite, is so vitiated that we 

 must have the details of a half dozen battles a day, and delir- 

 um intervenes if the telegraph wire breaks for an hour. Now 

 mark the results : the majority of great minds from the begin- 

 ning of time, have come from rural life. As an illustration : 

 this Eepublic has never had a President who was not born in 

 the country and brought up on a farm. So it is in every de- 

 partment of business, and in every calling and occupation. 

 The surplus of population — and I am afraid, more than 

 that — flows from the farm to the city. The boy goes penny- 

 less and unknown, and for a time he may scarcely hold his 

 way with his town associates ; for it takes him longer to grow, 

 because he has longer to live, and there is more of him ! but 

 after a time, inquire whence come the men who are master 

 mechanics, leading manufacturers, rich merchants, who fill the 

 professions and find brains at court houses. State houses, and 

 colleges, and they will tell you of the young men from the 

 hard hills, where their fathers gained a livelihood by hoeing 

 away the rocks, and sent their sons to the town M'ith cowhide 

 shoes, homespun apparel, and their little all of property — a 

 change of clothing, and the Bible that mother gave them — 

 wrapped up in a cotton handkerchief. Thus from the farms, 

 and most of them from poverty, have come up your Webster, 

 Cass, Choate, Douglas, Benton, Calhoun, Silas Wright and 

 Henry Clay — the men who gave dignity to the Senate cham- 

 ber, and exhibited grace and eloquence and learning before 

 courts and peoples. Thus from the farms have come the phi- 

 losophers and poets and scholars, who have left names to live ; 

 thus the warriors who have fought our battles and written his- 



